Quality Score

In AdWords, the quality score is an estimate, on a scale of 1 to 10, of how relevant ads, keywords, and landing pages are to searchers seeing your ad. A higher quality score is better and means that Google estimates the elements of your ad to be more relevant and likely to generate better results. You can see your quality score on the Keywords sub-tab on your campaign page.

Quality Score Calculation

The quality score is calculated every time an ad becomes eligible for an ad auction. This is a behind-the-scenes process that occurs every time Google chooses which ads to display. Ad auctions may happen for your ads several times a day. The quality score you see is an average of your scores compiled throughout the day. Google calculates the quality scores based on the following criteria:

Past click-through rate (CTR): How often that keyword led to clicks on your ad.

Display URLs past CTR: How often you received clicks with your display URL.

Account ads and CTR history: The overall CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account.

Keyword relevance to search: How relevant your keyword is to what a customer searches for.

Geographic performance: How successful your account has been in the regions you're targeting.

Your ad's performance on a site: How well your ad has been doing on this and similar sites (if you're targeting the display network).

Your targeted devices: How well your ads have been performing on different types of devices, such as desktops/ laptops, mobile devices, and tablets. You receive different quality scores for different types of devices.

The quality score impacts your advertising in many ways, but most notably with cost and ad position. If you have a better quality score, you will get lower costs and better ad position. If you have a better quality score, you will get lower costs and better ad position. The full impact is as follows:

Ad auction eligibility: A better quality score makes it easier and cheaper for a keyword to enter the ad auction.

Keyword's actual cost per click: Higher quality scores lead to a lower cost per click. This affects all bid costs including:

First page bid estimate: the cost for your ad to appear on the first page of search results.

Top of page bid estimate: the cost for your ad to appear at the top of the page above search results.

Ad position: Ads with better quality scores get better ad positions.

Landing Page Quality Score

The Landing page quality score is Google's determination of how good a visitor's experience will be after they click your ad and access your destination URL. Google likes to make sure your landing page reflects what you're advertising, and that it and other pages of the site are easy to navigate and use. Google encourages a good landing page experience and rewards it with a better quality score because, if visitors have a good experience, it reflects well on Google since it was Google's ad that led the visitor to your landing page.

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